Today we commemorate World War 1 tanks - September 15, 1916

Tanks, like airplanes, came into their own in WWII, but WWI was the first experiment with them. Tanks and airplanes of WWI looked more like something someone threw together in their garage, than like the WWII weapons.

Today is Tank Day, that is, the 100th anniversary of the first use of tanks in warfare, when the British Mark I tanks took the field. Their first use wasn't that impressive, but the Germans immediately caught on to the possibilities, and not only copied the idea, but soon painted the Iron Cross on captured tanks and sent them right back into battle.

Germany did come up with their own tanks in WWI, all twenty of them. You can find various pictures of the Sturmpanzerwagen (or to be boring, the A7V) on the Internet. They were impressive in the number of men the carried - 18 - and their name (say STURMPANZERWAGEN! in a crisp military roar) but they went at strolling speed (3mph) on good ground when they didn't tip over.

We thought this vehicle that crawled on its tracks under the command of the German Empire in the first episode of the World Wars reminded us of something you might expect little brown-hooded figures to come out of, kidnapping droids. So to show how truth is stranger than fiction, we did some t-shirts displaying the technology in the real Episode I.

Remembering the strange trench-crossing tracked metal boxes of the Great War, and 1Lt George S. Patton who 100 years ago was still stateside, riding horses.

"I glanced at my watch. One minute to 11:00, thirty seconds, fifteen. And then it was 11:00 A.M., the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I was the only audience for the greatest show ever presented."